Today is the 23rd anniversary of the murder of Amadou Diallo in 1999. The NYPD fired 41 shots at Amadou, who was unarmed and broke no laws and was a model citizen. And not a single cop was held accountable. They didn’t even lose their jobs.
His murder was my entrance in activism against police brutality. I was a student leader at Morehouse at the time and we all saw Amadou as our peer in many ways. And when I was Student Government President, we organized and fought for justice every way we knew how back then. No social media and hardly even any functional Internet. Organizing was different. More relational.
In some ways it breaks my heart that has police violence is still so horrible after the 23 years I’ve been in this fight. Some of these images I shared could be from today. America is deeply resistant to change. And what’s ugly is that New York’s Mayor is actually bringing back the disgraced unit that did this and caused so much harm.
Unlike 23 years ago, I’m grateful that we’ve now been able to convict cops across the country and finally have DA’s that stand up to their violence. But the violence shows no sign of ending.
It has been one of the honors of my life to become friends with Amadou’s dear mother, Kadiatou, and even introduce her to my own family. She’s a queen of a woman. If you’ve ever been in her presence you’d understand.
